Hillary Clinton’s surrogates tout her stamina after pneumonia diagnosis

As Hillary Clinton rested at home with a case of pneumonia, top campaign surrogates hit the trail Monday to downplay the illness and stress that the former secretary of state is such a hard worker that she had trouble accepting she needed to take time off to recover.

The reassurance comes a day after the Democratic nominee abruptly left a Manhattan 9/11 memorial ceremony, struggling to get into a van, and then hours later disclosed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia days earlier.

“Her energy staggers me,” Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, said the next day at a campaign stop in Ohio. “I have a tough time keeping up with her.”

Kaine reassured the crowd that Clinton was doing fine, saying she “immediately responded” to him via email when he asked about her abrupt departure from the 9/11 memorial ceremony. He said she was soon joking around about the size of their giant debate prep books.

Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, said that Clinton’s health is “good” at a speech on education in North Carolina. “I’m encouraging her — if the doctor says take three days off, take six days off,” Biden added.

“I mean look, walking pneumonia, that is out-of-hospital pneumonia, in a healthy adult is not a big deal,” former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a campaign surrogate and physician, told Yahoo News. “It means she has to slow down for a few weeks.”

“I think she’s going to be a great president, but her instinct is going to be drive herself as hard as possible as she can, but she has to dial back,” added Dean, who is also a former presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee chair.

Meanwhile, campaign officials portrayed Clinton’s initial decision to work through her illness in a positive light. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, told CNN that Clinton wanted to push through her Friday diagnosis of pneumonia. “She wanted to keep going, and she didn’t want it to be an issue,” he said. Mook, who also recently worked through an illness, added that her determination is “what’s going to make her a great president.” Clinton’s top spokesman, Brian Fallon, said she went straight from the doctor’s office to a national security summit and then answered questions from the media Friday. “That’s just who she is,” he told CNN.

Fallon added that both the staff and her doctor had to prevail upon Clinton to cancel her trip to California to rest.

But some people have criticized Clinton’s decision not to disclose her illness until her abrupt departure necessitated it. President Obama’s former top adviser, David Axelrod, described the response as part of an “unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems.”

The Clinton campaign has conceded it made mistakes in how it handled the incident Sunday, when it took hours to disclose Clinton’s illness.

Dean, however, argued that Clinton was right to not immediately inform the media, given what he sees as reporters’ unfair level of scrutiny of Clinton compared with Trump.

“Hillary for good reason is incredibly distrustful of the press,” Dean said, ripping what he called “mindless pack journalism” around her health. “You cannot trust the press — they’re not your friend, ever.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said he did not see a need for Clinton to disclose her illness before she had decided how she wanted to handle it. Meeks worked through a heart attack last year and did not tell the local press about it until after he had an operation to fix the problem. “As an elected official you try to be transparent, but you do that once you know what the scenario is, you don’t do it beforehand,” Meeks told Yahoo News.

Clinton has released a two-page doctor’s letter that is more detailed than the one Donald Trump released, which does not include the GOP nominee’s blood pressure and was written in five minutes, according to Trump’s own doctor. Both candidates say they will now release more information about their health in the coming days.

Fallon told CNN Clinton did not lose consciousness Sunday, but felt “dizzy.” A video showed her stumbling and being helped by three people into the vehicle. She was immediately making calls and chatting with staff after she got into the van, Fallon said.

Trump, who has previously questioned whether Clinton has the “stamina” to be commander in chief, has uncharacteristically declined attack her on the topic since Sunday. He simply said Monday that he wished her a speedy recovery.